


Tastes Like Warm Chocolate

by thisstarvingartist



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Chocolate, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, fic request, in which Rimmer is awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:23:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5775001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstarvingartist/pseuds/thisstarvingartist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister catches Rimmer snacking on his sweets stash and only has one request. (tumblr prompt)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tastes Like Warm Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from the lovely janamelie on tumblr: "Rimmer, Lister, chocolate. You can make that as innocent or rude as you like ;) No angst though, please :)"

Being the last human being alive in the universe on a giant red spacecraft three million years from Earth with a humanoid feline, an overzealous android, and the holographic reincarnation of his smegheaded bunkmate as his only company, Dave Lister had seen some bizarre, disturbing, and unspeakable things. None of them, not a-one, compared to the sight of Arnold Rimmer stuffing flavored toffees into his mouth like a starving man.

“Oi!” Lister shouted. Rimmer whipped around to face him, eyes wide like those of a startled animal. “Those are my sweets!”

Rimmer leapt to his feet, attempting to make a mad dash around Lister and out the open door, but there wasn’t enough room between them to prevent Lister from grabbing the man round the middle and yanking him back in.

“You’ve got enough left to last you to your late hundreds, Lister, you can do without a few morsels!” Rimmer cried shrilly, clutching a fistful of candies in either hand.

“You’re a hologram! You don’t even have to eat, Rimmer!” Lister shouted, grabbing for the sweets as Rimmer tried to scuttle away from him.

“Oh, and what, Lister? You’re telling me you eat these for the nutritional value?” Rimmer demanded, holding up a foil-wrapped chocolate cherry. Lister snatched it out of his fingers, along with the last of the candy still in Rimmer’s open palm, and dropped them back into their bin at the bottom of his locker. Lister eyed Rimmer, who unabashedly stared down at the bin, licking his lips thoughtlessly.

“Jesus, Rimmer, what’s gotten into you?” Lister demanded. Rimmer glared at him.

“All my afterlife I’ve been a noncorporeal hologram, Lister, and you’re actually asking me why I would be stuffing chocolate candies into my mouth after I’ve finally regained the ability to?”

“Well—” Lister faltered a moment, the idea not having occurred to him before. Of course, Rimmer’s Hard Light program meant that he was now capable of touching things, using his body beyond the scope of a visual projection—but it didn’t occur to Lister that that meant Rimmer could also _taste_.

Rimmer continued to stare at him, while Lister shifted from foot to foot, indecisive. Finally, releasing a long-suffering sigh, he relented and bent down to retrieve the bin.

“Fine, Rimmer, you can have some.” When he looked back up with bin in hand Rimmer looked positively ecstatic, reaching for the bin so quickly Lister barely had time to snatch it out of his long fingers. Rimmer looked put out, receding into himself like a weary animal.

“I thought you said I could have some!”

“I did,” Lister agreed, with a teasing smile. “But you gotta let me feed it to you.”

Automatically Rimmer’s expression shifted from one of disappointment to one of revulsion. “Smegging Christ, Lister, why on Io would you want to do that?”

“Have to make sure you don’t eat ‘em all somehow, eh?” Lister pointed out with an innocent smile.

Rimmer huffed, crossed his arms, uncrossed them, crossed them again, tapped his foot, huffed louder, looked away, and finally gave up.

“Alright. Fine. Just let me have some of the chocolate ones, okay? …They’re my favorite.”

Lister hopped into Rimmer’s bunk, sprawling out sideways with the sweets bin resting alluringly on his hip, propping his head up on one hand and waggling his eyebrows seductively. “Care to join me, Rimzy?”

“What in smeg is wrong with you?” Rimmer sighed, but complied anyway.

He laid straight-backed, tense, his fingers locked together on his chest and thumbs twiddling nervously. He side-eyed Lister, suspicious of the man possibly shoving him off the bed or something else just as sinister.

Lister, having no sinister intentions whatsoever, picked a small chocolate morsel out from the bin and held it over Rimmer’s mouth. After a moment’s hesitation, Rimmer tentatively opened his mouth, and Lister dropped the chocolate into it.

Rimmer’s lips sealed over the sweet, and his eyes screwed shut as he relaxed into the bunk, half relieved and half mesmerized by the taste of the chocolate on his tongue. Fascinated and enthralled, Lister picked up another piece, white and dark chocolate mixed, and held it over Rimmer until he opened his eyes to see it hanging there.

This went on for several minutes, with Lister dropping chocolates into Rimmer’s mouth (and slipping a few into his own once in a while, to be fair) and watching as Rimmer relaxed into him in increments, the creases on his forehead fading and his jaw unlocking, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with each candy given to him.

“Where d’ya think it goes?” Lister asked lazily as he lowered another chocolate morsel into Rimmer’s waiting mouth.

Rimmer swallowed the chocolate before replying. “I think the internal heat of my Hard Light drive burns it up. Nothing ever falls out of me when I go to soft light at least, anyway.”

“Ey, that’s actually kinda cool,” Lister said.

Rimmer shrugged, looking somewhat dejected. “It melts so quickly in my mouth—the flavor barely lingers for more than a few seconds.”

“Eh, but at least you can taste it at all now, mate,” Lister reminded him, lowering a caramel-filled morsel down.

“Mm, I suppose so…” Rimmer agreed, shutting his eyes and lifting his head to get to the chocolate morsel faster. Before Lister had time to realize, Rimmer’s lips closed around the chocolate, and accidentally brushed the tips of Lister’s fingers.

“Holy smeg, you’re mouth is _HOT_!” Lister shouted, both of them starting and Rimmer nearly tumbling with a squawk out of the bed. Lister quickly wrapped an arm around him and pulled him back, taking the arm away when Rimmer batted at him defensively.

“Sorry man, I was just trying to—”

“I know exactly what you were trying to do, Listy, and don’t you dare think for a second that I’ll stand for it!” Rimmer trilled, staring at him wild-eyed, half curled away from the other man, as far as he could go without falling off of the bunk.

“What’re ya goin on about?” Lister replied, startled.

“I know you’re trying to—come _on to me_ , Lister, and I’m—I’m hardly surprised, of course, as I consider myself to be a rather dashing and irresistible individual, but you can’t just—you can’t just _expect_ me to reciprocate your clearly ridiculous notions of—”

“Rimmer, I didn’t _mean_ to do it,” Lister sighed, settling back into the bed.

“But you—you did—we’re—” At a loss for words, Rimmer gestured helplessly at the pair of them, sprawled out together in his bunk, a half eaten bin of sweets being all that separated their bodies from physical contact.

“Well I—” Lister began to defend himself, then stopped. Because, really, what was he going to say? _Oi, it’s not like that, Rimzy, I used to do this all the time back with my mates before the accident—Chen was rather fond of strawberry-flavored tarts, if I recall!_ Because of course they hadn’t done something like this. This was—this was crossing a _line_. This was a line no one even think of crossing with someone unless… unless they…

Well. Lister was at a loss. He hadn’t anticipated… hadn’t even considered… but then, there they were. And Rimmer was…

“…Er, Rimzy?”

“What??”

“If you really aren’t interested, then why’d you get into the bunk with me in the first place?”

Rimmer blinked owlishly at him, taken aback, and opened his mouth to retort—but no retort came. He closed his mouth.

Lister grinned at him. “An’ why are ya still here, if you’re so not interested?” he asked.

Rimmer stared at him, eyes darting to the sweets bin, then snapping back. Lister just smiled at him. He wasn’t sure why he was smiling, or whether or not he should be smiling, but he was. Rimmer seemed caught somewhere between uncomfortable and plaintive, and it was a not-all-too-unfamiliar look on him. Lister picked out a large, milk chocolate morsel, and held it between them. Rimmer’s eyes moved down to stare at it wearily, uncertain of where Lister was planning on taking them.

“D’you think it’d hurt to kiss you?” Lister asked thoughtfully. Rimmer stiffened at the invasive inquiry, but didn’t leap out of bed and run screaming from the room. Neither did he respond.

“I mean… if it’s hot enough to melt chocolate, would it be too hot for skin? Or do ya think Legion put in some kind of sensor technology that can tell the difference between human skin and food?”

“Lister…” Lister stopped staring at the chocolate, instead fixing his eyes on Rimmer. Rimmer stared back, his gaze troubled. “I don’t…” a sigh. “I don’t know.”

“How would ya, mate?” Lister asked, letting out a little bit of a laugh. “Y’know… only one way to find out.”

Rimmer didn’t reply. He just stared at Lister, his expression growing desperate. Desperate to make this stop, or for something else… only one way to find out.

Lister took a bite of the chocolate and put the other half into Rimmer’s mouth, this time intentionally brushing his fingers along Rimmer’s lips. Rimmer gasped slightly, then before he had time to speak Lister leaned forward, sealing the two halves of chocolate between their mouths.

Rimmer’s mouth was _hot_. Almost feverish—his skin was searing against Lister’s but not so much that it was painful, or at all unpleasant. He sighed into Rimmer, letting more of his weight fall on top of the hologram, and when Rimmer let out a mumble of protest Lister pulled back to say “yer indestructible, Rimmer, ye can deal with a little extra weight on top of—” and then Rimmer’s hands were fisted in Lister’s shirt and he was being dragged back down, silenced by Rimmer’s lips against his own.


End file.
